Introduction As a Chief Technology Officer (CTO), I am always on the lookout for emerging technologies that transform the way we approach analytics. One such technology that caught my attention over the last few years and holds immense promise is the Analytics...

  We’re talking about security in the cloud Over Exposure Let’s put it this way, what do you worry about exposing? What are your most valuable assets? Your Social Security Number? Your bank account information? Private documents, or photographs? Your crypto...

The Importance of KPIs And when mediocre is better than perfect One way to fail is to insist on perfection. Perfection is impossible and the enemy of good. The inventor of the air raid early warning radar proposed a "cult of the imperfect". His philosophy was...

Is It Mine? Open-Source Development and IP in the Age of AI The story is familiar. A key employee leaves your company and there is a concern that the employee will take trade secrets and other confidential information on their way out the door. Perhaps you hear...

Silicon Valley Bank's Gambling with KPI's Led to its Collapse The importance of change management and proper oversight Everyone is analyzing the aftermath of the recent Silicon Valley Bank failure. The Feds are kicking themselves for not seeing the warning signs...

AI: Pandora’s Box or Innovation Finding a balance between solving the new questions AI raises and the benefits of innovation There are two huge issues related to AI and intellectual property. One is its use of content. The user enters content in the form of a...

The Gamification of Life Can it improve data literacy and help organizations make better decisions? I was a Cub scout. Fred Hudson’s mom was the den mother. We would sit cross legged on the floor in Fred’s basement learning about our next adventure. The adventure...

Swish or Miss: The Role of Data Bias in NCAA Basketball Predictions The 2023 college basketball season has crowned two unexpected champions, with the LSU women’s and UConn men’s teams hoisting trophies in Dallas and Houston, respectively. I say unexpected because,...

Two in a box (if you can) and everyone in documentation (always). In an IT context, "two in a box" refers to two servers or components that are designed to work together to provide redundancy and increased reliability. This setup can ensure that if one component...

As it turns out, yes, but just barely AI is ubiquitous. One of the most common places for AI in the home these days is the smartphone, smart homes and appliances. Recently, as we sat down to dinner, we had a conversation with Alexa that went something like this:...

Hallmarks of a Data-Driven Organization Questions businesses and candidates should ask to assess the data culture   Courting the Right Fit When you’re job hunting, you bring a set of skills and experiences. The prospective employer is evaluating whether you...

How do you tell your boss they're wrong? Sooner or later, you’re going to disagree with your manager.   Imagine that you’re in a “data driven” company.  It has 3 or 4 analytics tools so it can put the right tool on the problem.  But, the weird thing is that your...

Analytics Lie The Bias of Analysis   Mark Twain debatably said something like, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and analytics.”  We take for granted that analytics gives us useful, actionable insights.  What we often don’t realize is how our...

Teasers When did we first see data? Mid-twentieth century As a successor to the Vulcan, Spock 18,000 BC Who knows?   As far back as we can go in discovered history we find humans using data.  Interestingly, data even precedes written numbers.  Some of the earliest...

How you Spread Misinformation with Terrible Dashboards     Numbers by themselves are hard to read, and even harder to draw meaningful inferences from. It’s often the case that visualizing the data in the forms of various graphics and charts is necessary...

What Employers Need to do to Welcome Their Workers Back to the Office After nearly 2 years of working from home, some things just won’t be the same.   In response to the Coronavirus pandemic, many businesses shut the doors on their brick-and-mortar and asked...

The Dream of a Single Analytics Tool is Dead!   There’s a persistent belief among business owners that an entire firm needs to operate on a single business intelligence tool, be it Cognos Analytics, Tableau, Power BI, Qlik, or anything else. This belief has...

Why Multiple BI Tools Matter And the underlying challenges in making it work   There are 20 vendors ranked in Gartner’s 2022 Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms.  Over the past 10 or 15 years we’ve watched the pendulum swing as...

Cognos Analytics and Planning Analytics Under the Same Roof   IBM has just announced that Cognos Analytics and Planning Analytics are now under one roof.  We have one question –  What took them so long?  There are a number of obvious benefits to integrating...

They’re wild and they’re rampant!   I previously wrote about shadow IT here.  In that article we discuss its prevalence, its danger and how to manage it. I had no idea that Feral Information Systems (FIS) were a thing.  Feral cats I had heard of.  We actually...

12 Reasons for Failure In Analytics And Business Intelligence Number 9 may surprise you   In analytics and business intelligence, there are a lot of things that can go wrong.  We are, after all, looking for the single version of the truth.  Whether it's a...

Shadow IT: Balancing the Risks and Benefits Every Organization Faces   Abstract Self-service reporting is the promised land of the day.  Whether it's Tableau, Cognos Analytics, Qlik Sense, or another analytics tool, all vendors seem to be promoting...

10 Things the C-Suite Needs to Know about Analytics If you haven’t traveled much lately, here’s an executive summary of developments in the field of analytics that you might have missed in the airline seatback magazine.   It’s not called Decision Support...

That’s a bold statement, sure, but in our analysis, QuickSight has all of the qualities to increase market penetration.  QuickSight was introduced by Amazon in 2015 as an entrant in the business intelligence, analytics and visualization space.  It first appeared in...

Disclaimer   Don’t skip this paragraph.  I hesitate to wade into these contentious, often political waters, but a thought came to me while I was walking my dog, Demic.  I earned an M.D. and have been in some form of healthcare or consulting since.  Over the...